Cindy Watkin is one of three recipients of the 2012 Waterloo Award, the city's highest civic honour.

Making a difference

By James Jackson, Chronicle staff

The three recipients of the 2012 Waterloo Award say it is their passion for the local community that pushes them to make it a better place to live and work.

The K-W Symphony’s Edwin Outwater, Narine Sookram and Cindy Watkin were chosen to receive the city’s most prestigious civic award in a ceremony at the start of last week’s council session. Presented annually since 1997, only 36 people have been given the award.

Outwater has the highest profile as the music director for the K-W Symphony since 2006. Over the past six years, his work has grown the symphony’s reach and impacted the city by forging links between the performing arts, local businesses and the community at large.

He accepted the award on behalf of himself and the 52 fulltime musicians the symphony employs.

“I provide the vision and set the tone, but we have an incredible team of people who work so hard and have a unity of purpose,” Outwater said in a phone interview from Chicago, where he is working with that city’s symphony this week.

The native of Santa Monica, Calif., said he views himself as an advocate for the Waterloo music community and described himself as a “missionary” for the arts.

“I think nowadays there is a lot vying for people’s attention,” he said. “For us and others in the arts community who advocate for live music, exposure to music is inspiring, not just entertaining.”

Outwater has brought innovative and ambitious concert experiences to the community and every year 13,000 students are exposed to symphony concerts. His nomination supporters agree that Outwater has transformed the symphony into an outward-focused organization aimed at attracting younger audiences.

Beginning this year, the symphony will make a bigger effort to connect with its audience through the use of media and technology, including a time-lapse video of the stage setup prior to its concert at Centre in the Square last weekend.

“We’re making the orchestra very modern and current, while preserving our 1,100 year-old tradition of live music,” he said.

Outwater isn’t the only recipient of this year’s award who has made a profound and personal impact on the arts community in Waterloo.

Born and raised in Guyana, Sookram moved to the region in 1993 when he was just 17 years old. Since then, he has strived to provide ongoing cultural leadership to the Canadian Caribbean community.

“This is a very prestigious award and something I am very proud of,” he said. “For me, it is a personal passion to be community oriented.

“When you give, you get back as well.”

Sookram hosts an annual Caribbean Dreams concert to showcase new and upcoming talent and to promote a sense of pride within the Canadian Caribbean community.

These concerts have attracted talent from across Canada and the United States.

Sookram also showcases local talent though his weekly Caribbean Spice radio show on 100.3 Sound FM. The program shares West Indian and local Caribbean music and culture with its listeners and promotes grassroots community initiatives.

His volunteer work started before he moved to the region, when he created a local youth group in his home country when he was just 14 years old. The goal was “brainstorming and sharing ideas and ways to utilize our time in talent for a better community and to get kids off the streets,” he said.

Sookram plans to take his experiences as a volunteer and an immigrant to Canada and turn it into a book as a way of inspiring others to make an impact in their own community as well.

The final recipient of this year’s Waterloo Award is a well-known face in the Waterloo council chambers, so it was fitting for her to receive her Waterloo Award in that very spot.

Since moving to Waterloo almost 13 years ago, Watkin looked for a way to become involved in the community. She started by delivering her Eastbridge Neighbourhood Association newsletter before eventually becoming chair of the association in 2005. Since then, she has spearheaded many events and new initiatives.

“It was a tremendous honour to be recognized,” she said in an interview while seated at her dining room table. “I just think of myself as part of the team.”

Watkin spent four years collaborating with city staff and local politicians to get Fire Station No. 4 built in her community and she was a driving force behind the Parks Watch pilot project in 2011 to help stop drug use, violence, noise and graffiti in her neighbourhood.

She also organizes Eastbridge’s annual family fun day and silent auction that attracts upwards of 1,500 people, family skates, an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the new fire hall and she is also chair of the volunteer services advisory committee, helping develop the committee’s five-year strategic plan for council.

Add those volunteer responsibilities to her fulltime career as a business woman, non-fiction author, aspiring novelist and mother of three, and it’s enough to wonder what keeps her motor running some days.

“Every year we do great things and it inspires me to do more,” she said. “If volunteering feels like work, it’s time to make a change.

“I am so blessed to be able to do this.”

Watkin said volunteering has done more than change the community around her — it’s changed her outlook on life.

“I’ve gone from being someone who worries about everything, ‘What if it rains? What if no one shows up? What if, what if, what if?’ to not worrying,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do. We’re volunteering and just doing the best we can.”